Polyplexus: Trust in Media Incubator Part 1 Notes
Let’s get some background out of the way real quickly — I’ve been working on a project called Polyplexus for a couple years. Polyplexus was conceived to be a gamified social network for scientists and engineers to advance innovation. We saw two gaps in DARPA’s grant proposal process: first, a shortage of inter-university collaboration, and second, the lack of back-and-forth between proposers and sponsors. Of course, along the way, Polyplexus has morphed. The gamification is thin, though it’s coming, and we have rediscovered the value of disciplines beyond the hard science and engineering.
This week, we launched phase two of an Incubator aimed at interrogating public trust in government, scientific, and media institutions. This is very timely, because as I write this — and I can back it up with the evidence Polyplexus’ users, Plexors, have conjured — trust in institutions it at a historic low and declining rapidly. It’s a hard time to get a message across, and doubly so because there’s nowhere to trust.
We’re building a broadside effort at figuring out how to evaluate public trust, analyze it, and propose remedies for the 21st century credibility collapse.
What follows is an after-action on phase one.
First, this is the overview we posted:
“INCUBATOR OVERVIEW: The purpose of this incubator is to assess the state of public trust in news, governmental, and scientific institution. Which institutions do you trust, and why? We are soliciting Evidence, from peer-reviewed and otherwise credible journals and publications, examining how, whether, and why certain institutions are considered trust-worthy and why other institutions are not.
This is the first of a set of four incubators. The purpose of these Citizen Incubators is (1) to assess the state of public trust in news, governmental, and scientific institutions, (2) to study the present and empirical causes of changes in public trust in institutions, (3) draw causal linkages between institutions’ behavior, culture change, the information landscape, and changes in public trust, and (4) to identify best practices for maintaining and, if necessary, rebuilding institutional trustworthiness and effectiveness.”
Second, the comment archive can be found at https://polyplexus.com/incubator?idIncubator=463&initialTab=discussion. If you think this is an engaging conversation, and moreover, a necessary one, the dialogue is still ongoing until Aug. 11, and a new conversation nexus launches every week. We do a weekly live discussion on Friday afternoons. Mornings, if you’re on the West Coast.
Third, Polyplexus’ crop of comments can be harvested not only for opinions, but for better questions and scholarly evidence.
Some notable points:
1) Nobody defended that media, government, or scientific institutions are trusted. There was some debate as to how to define trusted. One suggestion was that when we hit 67% trust in a (trusted* — see the catch-22?) poll, we would be there.
2) Question: how do we take a snapshot of trust in the status quo? Several people took different approaches to answering this question. We’re still looking for the Goldilocks answer.
3) Question: what is a rule set? This is based on the premise that people have a subjective rule-set for determining whether an institution is credibility — whether this is a litmus test opinion on a particular topic, or a demand for a particular method, is unclear.
4) Game theory questions. Before we can talk about trust in large institutions, we have to understand how trust functions at the interpersonal level .For instance, “Person A and Person B are in a container that is half filled with gasoline. Each has a match book. How do I know B won’t light the match and throw it in the tank container before me?”
5) Discussions of DARPA. What role can the Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency play in the development of new institutions or the rehabilitation of the old?
6) Assessments of Pew’s evaluation of trust: How Pew Research Center evaluated trust: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/24/qa-how-pew-research-center-evaluated-americans-trust-in-30-news-sources/
These are just the highlight reel. Or, if you’ve got a better perspective, the low-light reel that’s a call to action. Check it out. Comment.
And, we did find one information source that our participants found trustworthy. With some asterisks. Can you guess what it is?
Here is a link to Part 2 which has a live event from 2–4 EST (11–1 PST) tomorrow. Jump in if you want. You’ll figure it out. https://polyplexus.com/incubator?idIncubator=465&initialTab=discussion
- Flint and Zane Dille
